Federal budget, 2008

The National Post is reporting that today’s federal budget has “something for everyone”, including this – for immigrants:

“$22-million over two years to modernize and speed up the immigration system. Plans include: ‘changes will be made to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to improve the immigration process. It is not fair for prospective immigrants to wait for years before being considered, and it is not desirable to wait that long for the immigrants the country needs’.”

“Streamlining our immigration process to make Canada a more attractive option for skilled immigrants will be important. However, Canada cannot count on maintaining current levels of immigration of advanced degree-holders to meet future labour market needs. In an increasingly knowledge-based world, competition for highly-educated immigrants is growing in developed nations and emerging economies alike.

Consequently, more needs to be done to attract the best and the brightest international graduate students who remain critical to fuelling the country’s pipeline of highly qualified personnel”.

Immigrant children? Not in the op-ed. Not in the budget. To access the budget documents, visit the budget.gc.ca website.

The Canadian Teachers Federation released a statement today about the federal budget and the lack of the federal government in meeting its obligation to children and youth – and to immigrant and refugee children and youth.

From the News release: “The federal government has a responsibility to help schools and school boards who are struggling, for example, to provide language and other educational services to immigrant and refugee children as well as a range of ancillary support services for children and youth”.